This is a joint blog shared by 2 lazy pple - Ciping & Wilbur, who wishes to use each other to maintain the blog. Sadly, Ciping is the more inactive one and Wilbur does most of the work in the end. Feel free to post comments on the tag-board, it feels good to know pple are actually reading and responding to your posts. It gives motivation to write more.
The most fun part about practicals would be the day before the practicals themselves. Instead of sitting around pondering what could come out, get to work and source for some 'inside' info that might have 'accidentally' leaked out.
I walked into both pracs with an idea of what experiements would come out, and they did. That's the fun part, to be able to predict correctly what experiments would come out. =) In terms of helpfulness, however, it was limited because it would only put you more at ease and make sure you don't freak out and faint at the sight of your experiment.
Its funny why I take so long for chem pracs, but always am able to finish my physics prac in a jiffy. That is, in a exam-situation, when talking and crapping are not allowed, not even to ourselves.
I started with the 2nd qn. It has been said that people who start with the 2nd qn are luckier because it includes a graph you have to draw, and most of the time, you won't have enough time, so you can do it later during your first qn, which would be easier.
That wasn't the case for me. I finished my 2nd qn with 10 minutes to spare. 2 options laid before me: re-do my experiment to double check OR read the 1st qn. I chose the latter option. And read through the whole qn, and started a bit on the 'plan the experiment' qn too.
Now, the ironic part is this. Although I kept telling myself, and my friends to READ the qn carefully, I somehow or other, missed the point which said - write your ans in cm. All my measurements were in metres. There.. 1 mark thrown away just like that. Anyway, for the 'first method', i got 1.19N for my weight. Fairly accurate i hope.
Next, the 2nd method, which I knew what it was about already. (Refer to tb: topic on forces: qn 7) Yet that didn't help much. I looked at my newton meter. The string seemed stretched and worn out and the meter did not start from 0. I alerted the t'cher and got a new one. Just as I was so happy that I had managed to spot the defect and got a completely new 1, I relised that when i tilted the meter horizontally, the meter went above zero. Little did I know that I had to adjust the scale to correct it. That was just so great. So i pulled it till it read 0.8N, which was the specified amount, when in actual fact it would have been 0.85N due to the zero error. As usual, I had 10 minutes left after completing the qn.
Since I had nothing much to do, I decided to try setting the meter to 0.75N instead to accomodate the zero error. Then I realised that 1 of the lengths could actually be adjusted to ensure that the string was horizontal, and HAD to be adjusted. At the same time, I did not set it to 0.75 but it was 0.8N. Measuring the various lengths approximately, since i thought my ans was accurate enough, I found that that provided a more accurate reading - 1.2
Right. With 5 mins left, and the new values in my head, a question came to my mind: "Should I change the values?" If I did, I would have to alter every calculation made along the way. Should I change halfway and time was up, all my marks would be gone. It became a risk I had to take, and I decided to go all out and change all the values. Fortunately, there was enough time. But my paper.. well.. looked disfigured.
Now, I'm consoled by the fact that at least that disfigured paper looked better than Jeremy's handwriting.
It turns out that my speed at physics prac actually proved essential in the end. I actually did the whole experiment in 10 mins.
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